And Ga Tech has excellent programs in their Business and Liberal Arts schools. So what? Most are still attending to major in STEM, though there are those who choose the school for the many other excellent majors.
^^To late to edit, but of course, I had meant, what MIT could do to attract more “Non-STEM” majors, in post 59.
Also, when I said “lack of majors” just to be clear, I meant people majoring in the department. Looking at the English dept. website, looks like about 6 graduated this year. I would have felt bereft with that few in my department, but of course that’s an individual choice.
The creative writing situation at JHU would be quite different if the creative writing majors were required to take the premed core alongside premeds, and almost none would apply.
The stem requirements at MIT are extensive and out of reach for most students (their calc 1-2 sequence covers a lot more than what it does at most universities, for instance.)
You can’t fail any classes freshman year? Things might have changed since the mid-late '90s…but I’m not too sure about that judging by what I’ve heard from dozens of HS classmates who are MIT alums and their freshman college roommates.
Quite a few of those roommates failed at least one course after hitting the academic wall or assuming it will be like their high schools where they could get As without much studying.
Another thing to keep in mind is even if MIT has excellent social science departments such as Econ and Poli-sci, their strengths/coverage or methodological orientation* may emphasize areas prospective undergrads and moreso grad students may not share/be interested in.
It’s no different than students opting to attend certain colleges over others which may have a better general reputation to even the educated man/woman on the street because the “lower” college has much stronger departments/coverage of certain subfield areas a given prospective undergrad or moreso grad student are interested in.
One good example at the graduate level…UPitt, Rutgers, and NYU are the top 3 programs in Philosophy…especially at the PhD level and for those in that field…unless your specialized subfield is stronger at one of the usual suspect elite Us…you’d be considered daft to turn down admission to those 3 not-as-elite colleges by overall rep for an Ivy/peer elite by overall reputation.
- I.e.: Exceedingly strong emphasis on quantitative analysis/rational choice at the expense of qualitative and other methodological models, strong emphasis on security studies which some students may not be interested in/have issues for personal/political reasons.
Sometimes…even possibly issue with one or more senior Profs such as someone with a right-leaning political views with an interest in studying Linguistics having serious issues with topflight Prof. Noam Chomsky. Examining whether one’s Profs/department will be agreeable in terms of one’s methodological orientation, sub-field emphasis, interpretation,…or at least have a genuine tolerant “agree to disagree” attitude is very critical for grad students. If the Prof/department doesn’t at least have the last…you could easily have the situation which an uncle encountered in his grad department at Berkeley in the early '70s when he found the department was contentiously split into two camps of bickering Profs with the grad students being caught in the middle. After two years of that bs, he quit the program as he felt it wasn’t worth being caught in the middle and attended/graduated from a T10 law school.
Just saying, but the mid 90’s are 20 years ago. And with today’s level of competition for an admit, kids shouldn’t be hitting any wall in first year.
But for history, this is a nice little note: https://shass.mit.edu/inside/history
They were saying that 10 years ago regarding elite U admits and yet, when I was taking grad classes and talking with grad classmates who TAed undergrads or staffing the writing center/academic counseling centers at Columbia U and Harvard, there were plenty of students hitting the academic wall and failing one or more courses. Also, Columbia’s rep among college applicants and their parents was much higher even back then than it was during the mid-'90s as USNWR ranked it well within the top 8 which sharply drove up applications.
From the perspective of the grad students who TAed or staffed those academic tutoring/counseling centers, it wasn’t very different from what they recalled from their own undergrad days at peer or Columbia College/Barnard itself.
I also personally encountered at least one Columbia undergrad with a boarding school background in that time period whose writing skills were such my 9th grade HS teachers would have given an F and a mandate to redo the paper from scratch. Not dole out a C which he angrily complained about to me when he mistook me for his American History survey TA.
Did what likely many other TAs in his place would have wanted to do to such entitled students who demanded higher grades than their work warranted in a rude belligerent manner…told him off and mentioned the part about how he should be appreciative his TA was much more generous than my 9th grade HS teachers would have been for that crappy excuse for a paper*.
- Couldn't help read the first two pages as the paper was literally shoved right in my face.
MIT.
@garland: “bereft”. That’s…a rich, deeply emotional response. I think I would agree that finding myself in a place where I was one of a very few, and outside of the main which could be characterized to be far more similar, that it would have made for a sad experience.
@cobrat (and someone else upstream): Yes, the approach that MIT takes to its courses probably is more quantitative based, which would have one presume that the qualitative aspects, exploration and application of theories and practice may be lacking. Does this mean there is absolutely a loss to the students; is there a complete absence of the qualitative?
@cobrat: My daughter whittled down her choices to just two schools, scaring me because she had not maintained her excitement with any of the others after some pretty fab early-write acceptances. While she was quite happy with UChicago and told me that she would have not struggled to find herself enrolled there, she found that, even for someone who was leaning toward topology, that the approach to math was too theoretical for her tastes. She left that ball in the air, though, in case one final school did not hit the spot for her.
Her clear-eyed understanding of the department’s approach to her intended field of study was one I was most grateful to know she was attuned to, and that she weighed with great consideration before making a final choice.
@lookingforward: Again, the link. Loved reading the history in the building up of the institution. Thx.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there are a few MIT first years who flunk or struggle to eke out a bare pass even with the “greater level of competition”. Even at MIT, there are likely to be a few students who don’t meet the standards due to a harsh curve, not putting enough time/effort in their studies, or finding out they are overwhelmed academically compared to their prior HS experience. In every entering class, some are likely to find themselves at the very bottom of the class.
Also, this brings up one thing parents and even some teachers I’ve had in HS use as a “rule” which I found to be more YMMV…the fact there’s a strong correlation between one’s HS academic GPA/class rank and how one performs in undergrad. If that’s the case, several college classmates and a few Ivy alums I’ve known should have been at the very top of their class and I should have graduated at the very bottom/flunked out of college.
Instead, it was the complete flipside as despite impressive HS academic stats/class rank, they ended up graduating near/at the very bottom of their graduating classes with abysmal GPAs/class rankings and I was the one who ended up academically tutoring those college classmates who if one went by HS academic stats/class rank…shouldn’t have needed tutoring.
If any of you are still struggling to understand why there aren’t more writers at MIT, my aspiring writer daughter has toured and immediately vetoed when I mentioned that I’d learned on this site that MIT offers writing. I can’t recall any mention of writing when we toured MIT, though there was a lot said about undergraduate research and we walked past quite a few STEM labs. She’s not afraid of STEM requirements, she could handle it, but she wants a writing community, not a super-techy culture.
Well, I wouldn’t say there aren’t plenty of writers there, in fact. Just not majoring in writing.
My son took the national writing challenge in his first year and is working on a novel, one which is quite good, tbh. The university also sponsors creative writing contests, the winners of which are recognized and the honor of a panel reception (not to mention the monetary prize).
The students who have chosen writing as an undertaking may choose to be elsewhere, but let’s not forget that those who have chosen to undertake whatever field of study that MIT offers to them in the sciences, come with a wealth of skill, talent and continued interest.
He does not care for techy culture, either, and is not a part of it.
I haven’t read the entire thread, but I have to say that the list of majors would be a lot more interesting and more valuable if it were broken down by actual departments at MIT, which is an engineering school that actually distinguishes between different types of engineering. At least it used to.
Funny part is I’ve known of several parents of HS classmates who are aspiring writers or have strong humanities/social science major aspirations either exclusive or as part of a double major who have joked that they should consider MIT. Heck, my own father would joke I should consider it for history/poli-sci with a strong bit of snark*.
For some who were interested in Philosophy, linguistics, Econ, poli-sci, etc…they did give MIT some consideration and some even visited the campus. However, when push came to shove, other peer elite colleges were viewed as much more optimal choices for them at that stage of their lives.
For others, when they actually looked into what the humanities/social science departments at MIT offered, they found the offerings/emphasis wasn’t what they were looking for and ended up applying/attending colleges whose humanities/social science departments were much more compatible with their humanities/social science academic interests.
Incidentally, this included a HS classmate who ended up doing a double major in US Politics and Electrical Engineering at Stanford as he felt the STEM and non-STEM departments there are all strong and offered what he was interested in.
- No chance I would have gotten in and even if I somehow was admitted for undergrad, I'd most likely flunk out as MIT's one of those schools whose academic rigor/workload is above the norm even among elite/respectable colleges. I do believe and know of many HS/college classmates interested in poli-sci at the graduate level who do/did give MIT serious consideration for PhD programs.
This whole thread is silly. MIT is one of the premier STEM universities in the world. Kids apply there for STEM! Kids generally apply elsewhere for other majors. If they are all lemmings, they are very smart lemmings for selecting colleges that play to their strengths and interests. Lemmings is a ridiculous word to describe any kids who go to the best colleges for what they want to study. In light of this discussion, I would be proud of a child who is a lemming in the sense that is described here!
Thanks for the encourgement, @lookingforward and @Waiting2exhale. I made a new thread with the link:
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-life/1899392-advice-on-how-to-gain-a-good-college-education.html#latest
@cobrat, it’s literally impossible to flunk any class freshman year at MIT now. Granted, having only two classes freshman year for which you have grades on your transcript may look a tad suspicious.
In any case, sure, people may choose whatever, but with MIT’s strength in several non-STEM fields and cross-registration at Harvard (to fill any gaps), I still think that many people are too blinkered when looking at colleges. And again, that comment applies to more than MIT.
"even when UChicago had a real Core, they were getting a bunch of kids who wanted to study a social science despite the Core requirements. "
well , yeah, duh!
Was Chicago KNOWN for its Engineering program then?
No, because there WASNT, until very, very recently, any kind of Engineering program at Chicago.
Chicago WAS and still is known as one of the top Colleges in the country for providing UG’s with a rigorous Liberal Arts education . That is the PURPOSE of the Core- not a by product.
MIT stands for Institute of Technology , not College of Liberal Arts. Like its cousin on the west coast, CalTech, its primary focus, and strength, has always been in the STEM areas.
PT seems to be creating a “problem” in perception that in fact does not exist, by comparing apples- MIT -to oranges -Chicago.
If a top student wants to study engineering , at one of the finest UG Engineering programs in the country, then it makes sense that he will apply to a MIT, or CT over a Chicago.
So much muddiness here.
@menloparkmom, MIT is closer to UChicago than it is to Caltech. Both MIT and UChicago are very strong in the sciences, math, social sciences, and humanities (granted, UChicago is stronger in more humanities fields). MIT also is strong in pretty much every engineering field. Caltech is strong in engineering, sciences, and math and offers almost nothing outside STEM (besides being fairly strong in microeconomics).
You, like many people, seem to fixate on the name rather than what a university offers. Going to LSE to study law must seem inconceivable to you (despite the fact that LSE is regarded by the Brits to have one of the top law programs in the UK).
People object to the term “lemming”, yet, over and over again, I’ve seen examples of people stereotyping based off of a name and lay reputation rather than a school’s actual strengths. If that isn’t lemming-like behavior, what is?
Honestly, I think it’s in the way the original question was phrased and, yes, “lemmings.”
“Granted, having only two classes freshman year for which you have grades on your transcript may look a tad suspicious.”
To be sure!